Coalition calls for freeze on bridging visas

National political reporter

Scott Morrison has called for a review into the guidelines for how boat arrivals were released into the community. Photo: Andrew Meares

Coalition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has called for an immediate freeze on the provision of bridging visas for asylum seekers, after it was revealed a man released into the community on a bridging visa had been charged with indecent assault.

Mr Morrison said that a review was needed into the guidelines for how boat arrivals were released into the community.

He said that such a review must detail a "requirement" to notify police and neighbouring residents about people on bridging visas or community detention in their area and the establishment of "behaviour protocols ... with clear negative sanctions for breaches of such protocols".

Mr Morrison also called on Labor to suspend the further release of boat arrivals into the community on bridging visas and community detention, "in all other than exceptional circumstances", while the review was under way.

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He said the freeze should not be lifted until Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor and his department could give the community a "clear guarantee" that there were safeguards in place.

His comments come in the wake of the arrest of a 21-year-old Sri Lankan asylum seeker, charged with indecently assaulting a student at Macquarie University last week.

An immigration department spokeswoman said the man charged was an asylum seeker on a bridging visa, but did not live at the Macquarie University accommodation.

A company called Campus Living Villages provides accommodation for asylum seekers at the university, under a contract with the Red Cross's Asylum Seeker Assistance Scheme.

Responding to Mr Morrison's comments, the government has accused the Coaliton of "cynically exploiting an incident which is before the courts to cause fear and unrest in the community".

A spokeswoman for Mr O'Connor said that the opposition needed to explain how they would pay for the policy of "scrapping bridging visas and keeping people in detention", as it was much more expensive than allowing people to live in the community.

The spokeswoman said that before people were released from detention, they were subject to a security assessment.

"Any person in Australia is required to abide by the law. A failure to do so should result in criminal proceedings, no matter who they are," she said.

The victim has told police she was asleep in her room in student accommodation at the university, in Sydney's north west, when a man broke into her room and assaulted her in the early hours of February 21.

There are 8700 asylum seekers living in the community on bridging visas while their claims for asylum are heard. Based on 2011-12 statistics, most are refugees. In that year, about 90 per cent of boat arrivals were later found to be refugees.

The Greens have described Mr Morrison's attempt to link an alleged indecent assault to refugees living in the community as irresponsible.

"It's clear that indecent assault is unacceptable and I am concerned for the young woman involved," Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.

"An appropriate response to this incident is to let the legal system deal with it – it is a matter to be left to the courts."

Senator Hanson-Young said that a freeze on visas for refugees to live in the community was not a practical response. She said any review of bridging visas should be seen as a chance to give people back the right to work.

"A lot of the difficulties surrounding the housing of refugees, including the shortage of available accommodation, could be answered by letting these skilled people work," she said.

Ms Willis said that less than one per cent of sexual violence in the community occurred through so-called "stranger danger".

"The vast majority of sex offenders are people who are known to the person who experiences the violence and most commonly it's the person's intimate partner or it's another family member, like their father, uncle, brother," she said."Sex offenders tend to assault within their known network."

Ms Willis said that the key to reducing violence against women and children was understanding how sexual assault and family and domestic violence occurred.

"For the Coalition to be stepping outside all of the evidence and all of the known facts about how and where sexual assault occurs and creating community fear out of that when they know it's not accurate is really not terribly helpful," she said.

"Holding all people who are on particular visas or from a particular country up as responsible for this is really quite inaccurate and probably quite racist, really."